I was surprised the other week that no one corrected Mindy Lehrman Cameron's statement (unless they did so off the list): <<Fred Wilson is an artist who has curated with museums to tell a story using their collections. I saw a show of his called "Mining the Museum" at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, Maryland in which he told a history of African Americans. In it, for example, he had a vitrine filled with silver objects from around the mid-nineteenth century (i.e., the Civil War). There were cream pitchers and silverware and then there was a slave shackle also made of silver just there simply among the artifacts.>> (quoted in Lee Boyko's message yesterday) I believe that if Mindy and Lee look more closely at the documentation of Wilson's "Mining the Museum" show they will find that a genuine (i.e. iron) slave shackle was used in the section "Metalwork." It's my opinion that the installation was a success because it used genuine objects from the Historical Society's collection, and did not fabricate such fantasy pieces as silver shackles, which would not create the frisson of the real thing. David A. Penney The Baltimore Museum of Art [log in to unmask] E-mail from: David A. Penney in Baltimore, Maryland [log in to unmask] 06-Jul-1995